Chuck Schumer’s ‘Dear Friend’ Invested in Solar as Schumer Secretly Negotiated Climate Bill
28th June 2024
Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Democratic Party megadonor James Simons’s hedge fund substantially upped its financial stake in several solar energy companies, which reaped windfalls from the bill.
According to federal elections filings, eight days before Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) publicly unveiled the IRA on July 27, 2022, Simons wired $2.5 million to Schumer’s Senate Majority PAC. Then, in August, one week after President Joe Biden signed the bill into law, Simons sent another $2.5 million check to the same PAC.
Simons’s trading activity, coupled with his aptly timed donations to the Senate Majority PAC, raises questions about whether he had advance knowledge of the IRA negotiations, which were supposedly kept private until Schumer and Manchin’s announcement in late July.